It's been one of those weeks where it goes by really fast but is filled with so much "stuff" that it really wore me down. Of note: I finished the first edit of my current novel (more on that this Monday in my writing progress post).

In the meanwhile, here's this weekend's list of cool and interesting stuff.

Let me say this: of the links below, if you do nothing else this fine Friday afternoon (or whatever time you're reading this), check out The Sun. The pictures are absolutely amazing.

Are You 24 Pages Away From a Multi-Book Contract?
When the struggling writer is pitching a book to an agent, he or she had better have a book, right? Well, Finnish SF author Hannu Rajaniemi sold three of them to classy UK-based Orion imprint Gollacz based on a mere 24 pages.

25 Years of The Best Short Stories in Science Fiction Has Come To This
It's been 25 years of Gardner Dozios' The Year's Best Science Fiction, and the 25th anniversary edition totals 692 pages of testimony to the state of the industry.

7 Reasons Men Should Read Science Fiction Romance
Male fans of science fiction romance are out there, and some are quite vocal about how much they enjoy the sub-genre. But many (read: most) aren’t.

Pain Ray Test Subjects Exposed to 'Unconscionable Risks'
Last fall, Nathan and I agreed to be guinea pigs in a demonstration of the Pentagon's controversial "pain ray," a directed energy weapon that creates an intense burning sensation designed to repel a potential enemy.

The Glowing, Shattered Face of Mercury
NASA's Messenger spacecraft zoomed past Mercury yesterday, sending back a set of luminous images that look like they were taken by celebrated nature photographer Ansel Adams in space.

The Sun
The Sun is now in the quietest phase of its 11-year activity cycle, the solar minimum - in fact, it has been unusually quiet this year - with over 200 days so far with no observed sunspots. The solar wind has also dropped to its lowest levels in 50 years. Scientists are unsure of the significance of this unusual calm, but are continually monitoring our closest star with an array of telescopes and satellites.

It's Halloween. In honor of the holiday, Juno Books is offering a free download of five classic ghost stories.

The collection includes:

1. Let Loose, Mary Cholmondeley (1890)
2. The Striding-Place, Gertrude Atherton (1896)
3. The Lost Ghost. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1903)
4. Kerfol, Edith Wharton (1916)
5. Spunk, Zora Neale Hurston (1925)

Go download it, and have a Ghastly Halloween.

I'm almost done with the first edit of my fantasy novel, The Five Elements.

I'm on page 381 of 385, which gives me a completion percentage of 98.96%.

A bit of explaining: Last week I'd related how I had to essentially axed the last chapter, so instead of editing I've really been engaged in new writing. At that time I also came up with a guesstimate on the total page count, pegging it at 388. Now that I'm a little closer, I dropped that down to the magic number of 385. Bottom line: 4 more pages to go.

I probably would have had that last bit done if I hadn't been without my laptop all weekend. In any case, there's a definite end to this road in sight.

Weekly progress is this: up to page 381 from page 372, pages remaining dropped from 16 to 4, and total word count (see graph at bottom) rose from 110,885 to 112,386.

Here's the graphs:

Percentage complete (almost 100%!):

Last, I've got a new one that shows Total Word Count. It's kind of interesting to see the beginning total of about 125,000 shrink as I edited along, chopping out unneeded words and, in some cases, entire sections. All part of the editing process.

Got some interesting links this time around, chief amongst them the one entitled The World's Best Paid Authors. It shouldn't be too difficult to figure out who #1 is.

Have a good weekend.

The World's Best Paid Authors
While the publishing industry has struggled to come up with a "Happily Ever After" storyline in recent years, there's still plenty of money to be made in the business of books.

Robot Repair Team Keeps Satellites Spinning
A lot of the satellites we depend on for modern life are in high orbits, beyond the reach of Earth-based repair missions. It would be prohibitively expensive, if not impossible, to send a team of astronauts up there. As a result, when those satellites fail or run out of fuel, they become space junk, and billions of dollars must be spent to replace them — until now.

One Way Up: U.S. Space Plan Relies on Russia
STAR CITY, Russia — This place was once no place, a secret military base northeast of Moscow that did not show up on maps. The Soviet Union trained its astronauts here to fight on the highest battlefield of the cold war: space.

A Conspiracy of Badness in Novel Writing
Every year, the Bulwer-Lytton Awards honor people who strive to write the worst first sentences for a novel that they can possibly imagine. But the winning science fiction entry this year is so weirdly similar to the first sentence of a forthcoming novel from Del Rey that we have to wonder if there isn't some kind of conspiracy of badness in the world of military SF.

How Writers Can Stay on Top of Their Game
There’s something that we writers can learn from athletes, and that’s how to stay on top of our game.

Should SF Writers Boycott Borders?
For any author, getting a book sold at a major chain is an important way to attract new readers and move copies. But it's especially important to scifi writers, who often get little exposure in book review sections.

I was going through my usual blog reading routine this morning and came across a link to some thoughts from Brandon Sanderson on his history as a writer. They're significant enough that I thought I would share.

Sanderson's Mistborn was a Tor Free E-book Giveaway back in July. He's also the guy tasked with completing Jordan's final Wheel of Time book after that author's death. There's also a recent video interview with the author that I came across.

The most profound thing I took away from Sanderson's post is that I (and I imagine many writers) found myself empathizing with many of his feelings and thoughts. I saw in his words some of the same questions I ask myself, such as "is this good enough?", "will this stand up to reader scrutiny?", "is anyone going to even want to read this let alone publish it?". It's, in an odd way, comforting.

At one point, Sanderson says this:

Here I was, having written twelve novels, and I seemed to be getting WORSE with each one. I wasn't selling, I was out of school working a wage job graveyard shift, and my social life consisted pretty much of my friends taking pity on me and coming to hang out at the hotel once in a while.

Sounds rather dismal. The thing that really blew me away was his statement that he'd written twelve novels (twelve!) without a publishing credit to his name. That's disheartening and inspiring at the same time. The latter because of his fortitude and perseverance, both obviously of heroic proportions.

Later, he says this:

I was NEVER AGAIN going to write toward the market.

After some initial failures, Sanderson changed tactics, trying to write what he thought publishers wanted. The results were sub-standard work simply because his heart was not in the material. The above statement marks a turning point, whereupon he decides to write for himself. He finds success not too long after that.

On that last point, I've seen it go the other way, too. I know of one writer in particular who also faced some small amount of defeat in getting published before he also decided to change tactics—study the market, see what publishers were buying (and what people were reading)—then take that information and write. The result was his first sale of many.

In light of that, it would seem there's no foolproof approach. What works for some may not work for others. It's both inspiring and sobering to read such posts as Sanderson's, though. Go check it out.

I'm on the last chapter. I might be done were it not for some changes I made midway through which, as reported last time, created a bit of a domino effect. The end result of that is that about 90% of the final chapter is no longer valid.

Here's what I've done: I scrapped most of the last chapter, keeping a few pieces here and there that I might integrate into the previous chapter. That puts me at 375 pages total, but with some new writing to be done in order to finish the book off. So, I'm making a guesstimate on the total pages since I don't really know what the total will be now. Let's say it's going to hit 388 pages total. That will make for a 15 page final chapter.

Here's where I'm at then:

In percent:

Hmm. Progress went down from last week. You can also see which week I was sick. :-(

Of course, the only reason for the decline from last week is because I tacked on my guesstimate of additional pages. I expect (or hope) that line will show some upward movement come next Monday.

Last bit o' data: I'm on page 372 of 388, leaving 16 pages to go. Total word count is at 110,885. That's higher than I would like considering I intend to add another 3,750 words (15 pages * 250 words/page), but dealing with a few thousand extra words will be the task of the next edit and not this one.

Until next week.

This weekend's links for your viewing pleasure.

I found some satisfaction in reading the story on Stephen King. While I'm not a huge fan of his or anything, nor have I even read that many of his books, his life story and his accomplishments are always of interest (to me, anyway).

This weekend is going to be filled with a walk/run at the Susan G. Komen event in Dallas (I think it takes place in the Northpark area). My wife's company is sponsoring their willing employees as well as spouses like me, so I'm just following her lead. Then, a bike ride and, on Sunday, what I hope will be the final mowing of the season (the best thing about no more mowing is more time for writing!).

Have a good weekend.

	Earth: A Very Special Place In the Void You know that "I'm an insignificant dot in the middle of this enormous universe" feeling you get when you stare up into the night sky a little too long? Well, some Oxford scientists think you might be a little more special than that - or at least, the planet you live on is.
	At 61, Stephen King keeps getting better Scorn, admiration, disdain, esteem, condescension, respect. These words all describe my attitude, at various times over the last quarter century, to Stephen King, who celebrated his 61st birthday on Sept. 21.
	Getting remaindered is not the end of the line […]remaindering - when publishers sell books at massively reduced prices to bargain shops who then offer them at knockdown discounts - happens to most authors at one point or another, whether they are the duds of James's poem or not. (Stephen King even has a rock band called the Rock Bottom Remainders.[…])
	Ocean Shows Up In The Middle of Africa At the same time as Paraguay is drying up, Africa is ripping open, a slow process that will result in the emergence of a whole new ocean, according to Scientific American.
	The Longest Science Fiction Books of All Time What are the longest books in science fiction, and what do they promise for the insane person who tries to read them?
	Were Pterodactyls Too Heavy to Fly? Popular images of the prehistoric world are filled with spiny stegosauri, placid brachiosaurs, and rampaging tyrannosaurus rex. But one image we may need to revise is that of pterodactyls flying overhead. New research suggests the winged lizards were far too massive to stay aloft, although some paleobiologists are inclined to disagree.